"Sheena, wait a damn minute will you?" Justin called down the hall to her. She turned and stopped when she saw Justin jogging down the hall towards her.

"What is it Justin? I just want to go back to the apartment and chill, alone." Sadie told him, then looked strangely at the gym bag. "What's that for?"

"I want to show you something." Justin told her, grabbing her hand and pulling her into the elevator with him. He pressed the button for the very top floor and leaned back against the wall, gym bag on the floor.

"Where are we going?" Sadie asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

"It's a surprise. Come on." Justin said, grabbing her hand again and leading her out of the elevator and to a door down the hall a little. He opened up the door that led to the stairs and began to climb. Sadie followed with out saying a word. She couldn't wonder about where they were headed for thinking about the way her hand fit in his larger one. She brought herself out of her thoughts when she felt the gentle breeze coming from the door that Justin had opened. She was quiet as he led her out onto the roof of the apartment building. She looked around at the view that surrounded her and it took her breath away. The lights of Orlando were shining brightly on the horizon. People walked around busily despite the fact that it was three in the morning. Partygoers and die-hard clubbers made their way down the sidewalks, in search of another party.

"Justin, this is beautiful." Sadie said, looking confused. "Why did you bring me here?"

"This where I go to think when I can't get time to myself. I thought that you might appreciate it right about now." Justin said, then noticed her shiver. He realized that she was still in her wet clothes. "I almost forgot. I brought this for you. Don't worry, they're clean." Justin said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a pair of sweat pants and a large tee shirt. Sadie took them from him.

"Thanks Justin, but where do you expect me to change?" Sadie asked him, an amused look on her face. Justin turned red.

"Sorry, hadn't thought about that. Uh, you could go behind that shed thing over there. I don't think anyone would see you and I promise I won't peak." Justin said, holding up his fingers in an attempt at the Boy Scout salute.

"Be back in a minute." Sadie said, patting Justin on the shoulder as she passed him, then disappeared behind the shed. Justin moved over to the edge to look down at the street below. Carefully, he sat down on the edge dangling his feet over the side of the building, staring down the fourteen stories to the city that seemed to never sleep. He was so lost in thought that he didn't hear Sadie come up and kneel beside him. "Justin?" She said, quietly, so as not to scare him.

Justin shook himself from his thoughts when he heard her say his name. He looked over at her and almost fell off the roof laughing. The sweat pants were way too big and the large tee shirt seemed to swallow her small frame. "I guess I am a little bit bigger than you, huh?" Justin said, taking her hand in his and bringing her to sit next to him on the roof. He slid back so that he wasn't seated on the edge and crossed his legs indian style. Sadie sighed and leaned her head on his shoulder, fingers still entwined with his.

"I don't even know why I lost my temper in there. I feel like such a jerk." Sadie thought aloud.

"You're not a jerk. You're just dealing with a lot and you hit your limit. I did too when we first stopped touring. I felt like the world was against me and everyone thought that I couldn't take care of myself. That's why I moved out of my mom's house." Justin explained to her.

"What was it like, when you stopped touring?" Sadie ask cautiously.

Justin took a deep breath and thought for a minute. "Well, at first I felt like I was a big screw up. Like something was really wrong with me. I hated myself for making me leave the thing I loved. I felt like I was crushing the other guy's dreams. I felt like shooting myself. Literally, I did. But after time I realized that it wasn't really my fault. Well, not completely. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be the best. I didn't know how to handle it all so I started to shut down, keep everything inside. Finally, I snapped. I couldn't take the judgement, the screams, the rumors, the expectations. I have now realized that I put most of that on myself. I am slowly learning to deal with it and move on. Hopefully soon, I will be able to tour again and the guys and I can get back to our passion." Justin said, hope filling his voice.

"I know you are going to be able to tour again and continue to follow your dream. I have faith in you." Sadie said, snuggling closer to him. Justin stretched his legs out in front of him, leaned back and rested his head on the gym bag he had brought with him. He brought Sadie up to rest on his arm, her head laying beside his.

"What was your life like before the nightmares?" Justin asked, hoping she didn't shut him out.

"I don't know. I guess just like everyone else's. I went to school, did my homework, watched tv and talked on the phones to my friends. Just the normal stuff. Then the nightmares started. I stopped sleeping because I was scared to go to sleep. When I went to the clinic, or the loony bin as I like to call it, and they gave me meds to stop the nightmares, I still couldn't sleep. My mind wouldn't let me. I knew that I wasn't going to have the nightmares while on the meds but my mind was too scared to believe it. So that's when the insomnia started. It came and went in spells. If I felt like I could sleep, I took the meds, if I didn't, I didn't." Sadie told him, breathing deeply when she was done. She hated that she couldn't tell him what she had done or the person that she truly was, but she was scared. Scared that he would leave her and not think twice about her. She needed him. His friendship meant the world to her. She didn't want to risk losing that.

"Why did you have to go to the clinic before getting the medicine? Why couldn't your doctors just prescribe the medicine for you?" Justin asked curiously. He felt Sadie freeze up beside him.

'No. You can't tell him. He'll hate you. He will be disgusted. God, Justin why did you have to ask me that?' Sadie thought to herself, closing her eyes against the pain that it wrenched in her heart.

"Sheena?"

"I don't want to talk about this anymore. Can we just sit here and look at the stars?" Sadie asked hopefully. She breathed a sigh of relief when Justin agreed.

Justin sat there, hands behind his head, while Sadie rested her head on his bent right arm. She was so close he could smell the shampoo she used, despite its dampness from the lake. He could feel her breathing beside him as she gazed at the stars. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore.

"What are you doing, JT?" Sadie asked, when he moved to turn on his side and look at her. Leaving his arm under her head, he propped himself up on his elbow and gazed down at her, looking into her eyes, her soul. Before he had a chance to talk himself out of it, he leaned down and gently pressed his lips to hers.

Startled, Sadie went to move, but was held steady by Justin's other hand. She found herself relaxing into the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him back with all of the passion that she had in her tired body.

When Justin felt her start to kiss him back, he deepened the kiss, bringing his arms under her, lifting her closer to him, no longer restrained by the arm rest in the car. With one hand, Justin smoothed back some hair from her face, cupping her head in his hand.

Sadie wrapped her arms tighter around his neck, trying to bring him as close to her as possible. She felt as if there were nothing else in the world. No people, no problems, no past.

Thinking of the past brought Sadie back to the present. As much as she wanted this, she knew that she couldn't have it. Fighting the tears that were fighting to free themselves from her eyes, she pushed Justin away from her and stood, walking to the edge of the roof and looking down.

"Sadie? I'm so sorry. I don't know what came over me. I didn't mean to scare you or offend you. Please, don't walk away from me." Justin pleaded, wanting nothing more than for her to talk to him, tell him what was wrong. He had felt it. She had wanted it just as badly as he had. He didn't understand why she pulled away.

"We can't do this, Justin. There are too many obstacles." Sadie told him through her tears. She wrapped her arms around her self protectively.

"Why not? I don't understand. For the first time, I don't understand you." Justin said, walking closer to her, putting his hands on her shoulders. She shrugged them off and moved away from him. "Do you just not want to, cause that I can understand and take a lot better than you not even trying." Justin asked, feeling a lump in his throat at the prospect that she didn't care about him the way, he was realizing, he cared about her.

"It isn't that. It's not that at all. I want to. I want to try to make it work, to have something meaningful." Sadie said, turning to face him. He could see her tears.

"I can feel a 'but' coming on here." Justin said, not even trying to make it funny.

Sadie nodded. "We can't."

"Why? Give me one reason. I care about you more than I have cared about anything in a very long time. I just want one good reason why not." Justin asked of her. He tried to move closer to her, but she moved away.

"I can give you a lot of reasons. One, we haven't known each other that long. Two, if we were to try and it didn't work out, neither of us are in any condition to handle that. Three, you don't know me." Sadie told him, turning back to him again. Her eyes were clouded with tears that she was trying to hold back.

"Well, one, I don't need to know you for years to know that I care about you. Two, if we don't try, can we handle it. And three, I know you better than I have ever known anyone, even the guys. I can see you, your soul. I see past your strong exterior and into the person that you try to hide from everyone because your afraid you'll get hurt." Justin said, putting a hand on her cheek. He was relieved when she didn't pull away from him this time.

"Justin, you don't know�you can't know what I've done. You'd think I was a monster if you knew. I just can't deal with that. I can't deal with you looking at me, disgusted with what you see." Sadie cried, not sure why she was still there and still talking.

"Sheena, I would never think of you like that. I couldn't think of you like that. I couldn't hate you. Tell me what it is. We can work through it together. Please, just tell me." Justin pleaded, more hurt that she wouldn't tell him and that she thought that than he was that she hadn't answered his question.

"I can't, Justin. I was weak once and I don't want to be that way again." Sadie replied, tears now flowing freely down her cheeks.

"Sheena, up until now, we have told each other everything. Forget for the moment that we ever kissed, that we ever thought about something more than friendship and just tell me, your friend, what's wrong." Justin said holding onto her cheeks, forcing her to look at him.

Sadie took a deep breath knowing that she was going to have to do this whether she wanted to or not. Their friendship and her wellbeing depended on it. She knew that she wouldn't be able to concentrate on getting over the nightmares if she were worried about him finding out about her past.

"Justin, when all of this started, the nightmare, I couldn't handle it. I couldn't allow myself to sleep. I took caffeine pills, but eventually, they stopped working. I tried everything I could to stay awake. Finally, when everything else stopped working and the doctors couldn't seem to find anything to help me I started taking speed. I would only take it when nothing else would work. Soon nothing else worked but that and I started taking it every day. Pretty soon, I was an addict. I couldn't function with out it. That is why I went to the clinic. Not just for my nightmare, but for my addiction too." Sadie breathed deeply, her secret finally out. She felt nervous about his reaction, but also a sense of relief at having finally told him.

Justin stood there, not sure what to say. He didn't hate her. She didn't disgust him. He felt only the need to protect her and reach out to her, but he also knew her, and in that, he knew that it would take more than words to make her believe that he understood and cared. More than words to make her see that he didn't feel all of those things she expected him to feel. All he felt was pain for her. He could feel the pain that she had to have gone through.

With no more thought on the subject, Justin reached out and pulled her close to him. She didn't fight him, couldn't have through her tears and her body shaking. Wrapping his arms protectively around her, he held her close while she cried. He knew that it had taken a lot for her to tell him her secret. He felt for her. He didn't know what she had been through, he hadn't resorted to that form of detachment when his problems started, but he did understand her fears in telling him. He had felt the exact same thing when he first told him family and the other guys that he couldn't tour for a while.

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? You could have told me." Justin whispered to her, smoothing her hair from her face.

"I didn't want you to hate me or be disgusted by me. I don't think I could handle that Justin, not from you." Sadie cried into his shoulder. He pulled her back away from his so that he could look in her face.

"I could never be disgusted by you or hate you. I care about you too much. I just want to help you and be there for you. That's all I want." Justin told her, looking in her eyes.

Sadie pulled back, wiping the tears from her eyes. "That is all I want too, Justin. I want to help you and be there for you. I want you to talk to me and laugh with me and let me be myself, no walls, no facades. I want you to be yourself, no walls or facades. That is all I want." She told him, entwining her hands with his, by their sides

"You want truth. I will give you truth. I am scared. Terrified actually. I am terrified of what is happening to me. I'm terrified of what I feel. I am terrified of not being able to follow my dream. I am terrified of following my dream." Justin told her, holding her gaze. He wasn't sure that he understood what he had just said, but he could see through Sadie's eyes that she did. "What are your dreams Sadie?"

Sadie's eyes began to tear again. "I don't have dreams anymore, only nightmares. I close my eyes, I see no future. I just see a big black nothing." She told him, her bottom lip quivering, her tears spilling over her eyes and down her cheeks, under Justin's hands that held her face.

With his thumb, Justin wiped away a tear from her cheek, then, slowly he leaned forward and kissed each of her eyes and then the tears still on her cheek. He kissed her then, tasting the saline of her tears on his lips, on her lips. His arms tightening around her, he pulled her closer to him, her smaller frame fitting perfectly to his body.

Sadie gave in to the kiss, allowing him to wash away all of her doubt and troubles, if only for a moment in time. For that moment, she was who she used to be. Just a girl, with no troubles and demons to run from.

"Sadie? Justin? Are you guys up here?" Came a male voice from the stairway into the building. Justin and Sadie slowly, reluctantly pulled apart. They stood there a moment, looking at each other, until they heard the footsteps of a third party approaching them. They pulled completely apart and faced their visitor. They saw Joey come around the corner of the shed where Sadie had changed earlier. "There you guys are. I looked all over this building for you. We're going to watch some videos in the girls' apartment. You guys want to join us?" Joey asked hopefully.

"Sure. We'll be down in a minute." Sadie said, smiling at Joey, that fake smile that everyone seemed to buy.

"Ok. We'll be waiting for ya." Joey said excitedly, hurrying back down the stairs and out of sight.

After he was sure Joey was gone, Justin turned back to Sadie, placing a soft kiss on her lips, before pulling her in for a hug. "We are going to finish this discussion. Don't think you got out of it." Justin said, amusement in his voice.

"With you pursuing the topic, I know better." Sadie said, with a small sarcastic laugh. "Come on before you freeze. You still haven't changed clothes." Sadie said, taking his hand and pulling him towards the door to the stairs.

"Well I would have, but someone stole my clothes. And whose fault is it that I got soaked in the first place?" Justin asked, looking thoughtful.

"Oh shut up JT."

Chapter 9

Chapter 11